


against a sure winter

by kearlyn



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Bodhi Rook, BAMF Cassian Andor, BAMF Jyn Erso, F/M, Getting Together, Hoth, Multi, Polyamory, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2018-12-23 19:38:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11996598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kearlyn/pseuds/kearlyn
Summary: “Imperials forces have entered the base! Imperial forces have entered—“The transmission cuts out and Jyn curses under her breath; the chill air is like fire in her lungs as she runs. She drags her blaster from its holster on her thigh but doesn’t slow down as she rounds the next corner of Echo Base’s frozen corridors.They’re almost out a time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This thing has been in the works for a few months now (interrupted by some long periods of no writing), so I'm so glad it's finally ready to share. It will update Monday and Thursday until complete.
> 
> Title is from "Winter Trees" by William Carlos Williams

“Imperials forces have entered the base! Imperial forces have entered—“

The transmission cuts out and Jyn curses under her breath; the chill air is like fire in her lungs as she runs. She drags her blaster from its holster on her thigh but doesn’t slow down as she rounds the next corner of Echo Base’s frozen corridors.

They’re almost out a time.

Her comm clicks again, this time on a private channel.

“Jyn, where are you?” Bodhi whispers.

Static crackles over the channel as another explosion rocks the base.

“East Wing,” she replies. “Corridor A-12.”

“You’re getting close,” Bodhi says.

Jyn doesn’t reply. In the flickering light of the base’s failing electrical systems, she can see the white puff of steam that forms with every exhale. Hoth’s biting chill has begun to worm its way through her parka.

( _Cassian’s_ parka. She tries not to think about the crinkles around his eyes and the laughter in the corners of his smile as she’d swiped his coat that morning, complaining that hers wasn’t thick enough.

Cassian had been in the East Wing when the Imperial bombardment began and Jyn hasn’t been able to raise him since.)

As she rounds the next corner, she curses and comes to a skidding, awkward stop. The corridor is completely blocked by chunks of ice and snow from a caved-in ceiling.

She drags out her comm. “Bodhi, the corridor’s blocked,” she says. “I need another way.”

There’s a moment of silence and Jyn is about to hail Bodhi again when the comm crackles in her hand.

“Jyn… there’s no other way.”

Jyn curses again and slams her fist against the wall in frustration. Cassian is somewhere on the other side of this rubble and she needs to get to him. She scrambles forward and begins to drag the nearest blocks off the pile. Snow tumbles down over her gloves, filling the meager hole she’s created.

“Jyn,” Bodhi says, his voice anxious. “We’re running out of time.”

“I know,” she says, and she does.

Bodhi’s assigned to fly the last transport of the evacuation. Jyn knows that he’ll wait for them as long as he can, knows he would wait for them forever if she asked, but there’s more lives than just Jyn and Cassian’s counting on him. He’ll have to take off soon.

Jyn looks frantically around for anything that might help her. Partially buried in the snow, she spots a glint of metal. When she digs it out, she finds a heavy-duty blow torch, one of the ones the construction crews had used to initially carve out the base’s tunnels. She drags it off the ground, settling the heavy power pack onto her back and balancing the torch in her arms.

“Where is Cassian’s signal?” she asks Bodhi over the comm.

He doesn’t hesitate or ask questions. Three years of missions and mess hall dinners and long sleepless nights have forged an unbreakable bond among the Rogue One survivors.

“Fifteen feet ahead and to the right,” Bodhi says. “Looks like he’s in a storage room.”

Jyn glances to her right and finds a door, its sign indicating a meeting room. She opens the door and lets out a relieved breath when she finds the room clear of debris.

“I found a torch,” she says. “I’m going to make a hole from the next room over.”

“Okay,” Bodhi says. “But hurry.”

She doesn’t want to ask, but needs to know. “How long do I have?”

“Twelve minutes,” he says. “Less if the Imperials make it to the hanger.”

“Right,” she says, and gets to work.

The blow torch cuts easily through the ice and snow, but the base’s walls are thick. By the time Jyn clears a hole just larger enough to crawl through (and just big enough for Cassian if she has to drag him back), she is keenly aware of the clock ticking down inside her head.

Bodhi’s voice is a soothing bit of calm in her ear as she works; he’s just as stressed as she is, but she feels better knowing that he’s there. (She always feels better knowing that Bodhi and Cassian are close. She’s been avoiding thinking about what that means for… a long time.) Bodhi’s kept her aware of the progress of Imperial forces through the base and while it doesn’t look like the transport will have to take off early, the chances of Jyn having to fight her way back to the hanger go up with every second.

As soon as the last bit of ice melts away and Jyn can see into the dimly lit storage room, she shucks off the equipment and crawls through the hole. On the other side, only a single lamp is still working, throwing flickering shadows across the small space. Jyn clicks on a flashlight and swings the beam around the room.

“Cassian!” she calls.

There’s no response and the beam of the flashlight reveals only empty corners and scattered equipment.

Cassian isn’t here.

She clicks on her comm. “Bodhi,” she says, “I’m in the storage room. I don’t see Cassian. Are you _sure_ his signal is here?”

“Yes,” Bodhi says. “His signal is right in front of you. Less than five feet.”

Jyn turns the flashlight but sees nothing except a pile of snow and chunks of ice where part of the storage room had collapsed in another cave-in. Five feet in front of her is… right in the middle of the snow pile.

Jyn feels suddenly like she’s been shoved naked into the middle of a Hoth blizzard, shock and cold terror wrapping around her body.

“No,” she whispers and lurches forward.

She hears Bodhi calling her name as if from a distance, but can’t respond. Can’t do anything but dig, dragging ice and snow off the pile with reckless abandon. Her heart is in her throat and her mind feeds her an endless litany of _no no no no no_. Not Cassian; she can’t lose Cassian.

After what seems like hours but must only be a few minutes, she drags off another chunk of ice and finds a patch of dark material, jarring against the white.

“Cassian,” she says. “Cassian!”

The shape doesn’t move. Jyn digs faster, clearing ice and snow until she can drag the limp body back into the clear area of the storage room. She rolls the man onto his back and gently brushes snow away from his face, then lets out an explosive, relieved breath.

It _is_ Cassian. His dark lashes fan against skin unnaturally pale from the cold. For a heart-stopping minute, Jyn can’t tell if he’s breathing, unable to see the rise and fall of his chest underneath the bulky coat. She presses her face close to his until she can feel the unsteady puff of warm air from his breath against her skin.

“I found him,” she says shakily into the comm.

“Thank the Force,” Bodhi says. His voice is shaking too. “Jyn you have to hurry. The Imperials are almost at the hanger. We’re prepping for launch.”

Jyn swallows and pushes to her feet, dragging Cassian’s limp weight with her. Her mind is whirring with calculations, but even as she stumbles towards the hole in the storage room she hears the distant sounds of Imperial boots and knows the truth.

Even if there were no enemies between her and the shuttle, the hanger where Bodhi is docked is clear on the other side of the base.

“We’re not going to make it,” she says. There’s no emotion in her voice — there’s no point in getting emotional. (She has to force her voice not to shake. She has to be strong for Bodhi. He’ll never go if she isn’t.)

Even as Bodhi sputters and cries denials in her ear, Jyn is already rapidly sorting through plans and options. Her eyes roam around the storage, looking for a solution, and alight on the room’s door, miraculously positioned far enough from the ceiling’s collapse that it — and the corridor beyond it — are likely still accessible.

“Bodhi, we’re not going to make it,” she says firmly, changing direction and dragging Cassian towards the door. “Cassian’s unconscious and probably hurt bad. There’s a base full of Imperial soldiers between us. We’d never make it. You have to go.”

“Jyn, I can’t leave you.”

“You have to,” she says even as her heart clenches. Selfishly, she wants to tell him to stay, wants to beg him to come rescue them the same way he came for them on Scarif. The same way he comes for them or waits for them on _every_ mission they run.

The door creaks open at Jyn’s touch and, just as she hoped, the hallway is clear.

“We’ll be okay,” she says. “I think I can get us to the tauntaun pen. We’ll make a run for the cave system Skywalker found. It’s far enough that we can probably be off Imperial radar. We’ll wait it out until they leave.”

There’s a long silence on the other end, then Bodhi says, soft and fierce. “I’ll come back for you. As soon as it’s safe. I’ll come back for you.”

“I know,” Jyn says and she does. It’s a fact of the universe. People live, people die, the Rebel Alliance fights the Empire, and Bodhi Rook will come back for them.

“May the Force be with you,” Bodhi says.

Jyn can hear the sound of shuttle engines engaging in the background. (She wants to say… something. to acknowledge the mixed up, complicated mess of feelings she and Bodhi and Cassian have been dancing around for years. In case she doesn’t get another chance.)

“May the Force be with us all,” she says.

Jyn stands for a long moment in the corridor as the comm clicks off, imagining the shuttle’s smooth flight into the atmosphere, past the Imperial blockade, and off to safety. Then she shakes off those thoughts and continues her slow pace down the corridor.

She has a lot to do and a long way to go if she and Cassian are going to survive this.


	2. Chapter 2

Cassian wakes up with an ache in every inch of his body, a chill working its way into his bones, and a profound feeling that something important is missing. He thinks for a moment that he must have fallen from a tauntaun and stretches his memory. The last thing he remembers is—

He sits upright abruptly. Or at least, he tries to.

Pain stabs his body at the first movement and he slumps backward, tears in his eyes and fire in his veins. Even through the agony, his mind reels.

The last thing he remembers is the boom of Imperial ordinance striking the base and the thunder of ice and snow collapsing on his head.

He tries again to push himself upright. If the Imperials are attacking, he _has_ to get up. (Jyn and Bodhi, where are Jyn and Bodhi?) Agony flares along his ribs (broken, he thinks) and his left wrist collapses under him. He thumps backwards again and tries to curl instinctively to his side against the pain in his torso.

Through the haze of pain, he thinks he hears footsteps. Then there are hands on his body, forcing him to uncurl, guiding him gently upright to lean against something soft and small. His breathing comes easier and as the pain begins to clear, he can hear a voice murmuring in his ear.

He _knows_ that voice.

He pushes the pain aside and concentrates. The murmur becomes words and Cassian feels something inside him unclench with relief.

“—me. Cassian, it’s me. You’re okay. I’ve got you. I’m here.”

“Jyn,” he whispers, pushing the words out through a dry throat.

The litany stops.

“Cassian?” she says.

He tips his head back and blinks to clear his vision. Her face swims into view, pale skin glowing from under a halo of fur lining. He’s propped up against her legs, head in her lap and pillowed against the bulky fabric covering her stomach. Behind her head, light filters through the burnt orange synth-fabric of an emergency shelter.

“What happened?” he asks.

They’re probably not on base, not if they’re ensconced in an emergency shelter. The Imperial invasion is a worry gnawing at the back of his mind, but he finds that with Jyn here that worry isn’t as pronounced.

“What do you remember?” she asks.

“An attack,” he says. “The Imperials. The ceiling collapsed and then… nothing.”

Jyn nods and some of the tension slides out of her face.

“Good,” she says.

At Cassian’s raised eyebrow, she continues. “You’ve been unconscious for days. I was worried there would be memory loss.”

“Days…” Cassian murmurs, feeling a clench of worry in his stomach. If the Imperial attack was _days_ ago and he and Jyn are outside in an emergency shelter, what does that mean for the rest of the Rebel Alliance?

“Jyn, the attack. What happened?” He tries to sit up again but her firm hand on his shoulder keeps him from moving.

“Stay down,” she says. “You broke or fractured half your ribs and you’ll only hurt yourself more if you try to get up.”

Cassian settles back and waits.

“The base is gone,” she says finally. “Most everyone got away though.”

Most everyone, he thinks, stomach turning over.

“Bodhi?” he asks, almost not wanting to know the answer.

“Got away,” she says. “He was on the last transport out, but Imperial comm chatter says it cleared the blockade.”

Cassian breathes a sigh of relief.

“And us?” he asks.

“You got buried in a cave-in. I got you out, but we couldn’t make a transport. So we’re hiding in Skywalker’s cave system until the Imperials leave.”

Cassian thinks about that, about how much was implied in that little statement. A base full of Imperial soldiers, an injured man, and no help? That they’re alive and not in Imperial hands is a testament to her skill and her stubbornness, he thinks. Again.

“You’re making a habit of getting me out of impossible situations,” he says.

From the way her mouth tightens and her eyes darken, he knows she’s thinking the same thing as him — those desperate final moments on Scarif when he’d been worse than useless and a barely conscious burden. It had been Jyn who’d managed to re-establish contact with Bodhi and Jyn who got them to them back to the damaged shuttle.

Seeing the painful memory in her eyes, Cassian reaches out and squeezes her hand. It’s awkward with their heavy mittens on, but it’s a comfort all the same.

“Thank you,” he says.

She smiles at him.

“You can thank me by not doing this again,” she says and he smiles.

“I’ll try.”

They sit together in silent comfort for a long moment before Cassian broaches the other question on his mind.

“Do we have a way off this planet?”

Jyn sighs and shifts restlessly under him.

“There might be a ship left on base,” she says, “but I haven’t gotten close enough to see. There’s still Imperials in the area.”

“I doubt they’ll leave anything behind that we can use,” Cassian says. “Assuming there are any ships left at all.”

Jyn nods.

“I figure the same,” she says, “But Bodhi knows we’re here. He said he’ll come back for us.”

Cassian feels a tiny knot of worry release from around his heart. Bodhi Rook is as much a part of his new little family as Jyn.

(There’s maybe something there that’s more than family. They’ve never talked about it.)

“If he says he’ll be back, then he will,” Cassian says.

Jyn nods. There is no uncertainty in her expression.

“I know,” she says. “We just have to survive until he gets here.”


	3. Chapter 3

Bodhi doesn’t know how many days it’s been since, white-knuckled and shaking, he guided his transport carefully through the graveyard of Rebellion ships in Hoth’s orbit and out into the black. (Weeks? Has it been weeks?) Following scatter protocol, they’ve been jumping from system to system across the galaxy trying to ensure that they aren’t followed or captured while Command re-groups.

It’s the boredom of sitting for hours in the shadow of an asteroid or moon waiting out the time to their next jump combined with the terror of knowing that at any minute a star destroyer could appear in the system to hunt them down.

Like most of the pilots in the fleet, Bodhi is running on too many stims and too little sleep. It’s beginning to make his brain ache and the edges of the world go wobbly. He should sleep. He knows he should sleep. The medic on board has even offered, more than once, to give him the drug cocktail that would counteract the stims and let him sleep for a shift.

But Bodhi can’t.

Part of it is the stress of the constant Imperial threat. It’s certainly what’s keeping some of the other Rebels on board awake. They pass each other in the transport’s small corridors on their off shifts and carefully avoid acknowledging their mutual insomnia.

The other part though — the bigger part — is knowing that if he sleeps, only nightmares wait for him. That final conversation with Jyn on Hoth curls around his brain during every moment of his waking hours. Awake he can carefully avoid thinking about it. He can avoid thinking about Jyn and Cassian and worrying if they made it out, worrying if they have enough supplies, worrying if he’ll finally make it back to Hoth only to find them frozen to death from the cold.

(Avoid the aching fear that he’ll never get a chance to tell them what they mean to him.)

Asleep he can’t avoid those thoughts and he knows that his dreams would be all nightmares.

So here they are, days later, finally rejoining the rest of the fleet. As they exit hyperspace and Bodhi begins the shut-off procedures for the hyperdrive for the first time since their escape, a sigh of relief goes through the transport. The sight of _Home One_ and its tiny fleet of escorts in a deserted corner of space, silhouetted against the blackness, is a relief for everyone on board.

Bodhi’s co-pilot, an Alderaanian refugee who answers only to Sparky, lets out a sigh of relief in the seat next to him.

It’s the first time they’ve both been at the controls since Hoth. With few pilots in the fleet qualified to fly the big transports and a lot of pilots killed in the battle or assigned to evacuate with the earlier transports, Bodhi thinks it’s a miracle that even two pilots made it aboard this one.

“Home sweet home,” Sparky says as Bodhi maneuvers their ship into _Home One_ ’s main hanger. It’s technically the other man’s shift, but he’s shown no inclination of taking the controls from Bodhi and Bodhi doesn’t want to give them up.

He knows that as soon as his job as done, he’s going to fall apart hard and he’d rather do that alone than in front of Rebels who are mostly strangers to him.

(He’d rather do it in the company of Jyn and Cassian, who’ve held him through more than one breakdown during his recovery from Bor Gullet and Scarif, but Jyn and Cassian aren’t here. And might already be dead. He’s trying not to think about it.)

Bodhi’s hands don’t shake as he squeezes the transport in between a scorched and partially disassembled X-Wing and the hanger’s wall. The silence as he finally, finally powers down the ship’s engine makes him feel like he’s been suddenly ejected into space without a tether. As he steps down onto the main hanger’s deck, the subtler hum of _Home One_ ’s engines is only a minor relief.

A lieutenant from the Intelligence division is waiting for Bodhi and with a jolt Bodhi realizes that he’s been the highest ranked officer on board the transport for the entire flight. He so rarely thinks about his own rank because he’s always working with Cassian, who treats their little family as equals, and Jyn, who’s never met an officer she didn’t want to challenge and has, without fear or hesitation, told generals that they were addle-brained bantha-fuckers. To their faces.

(He has to curl his hands into the sleeves of his jacket to keep anyone from seeing the right one shake. (The engineering of the prosthetic on his left is too good—or not good enough—to shake because of nerves.) The thin, tan jacket he’s wearing is one of Cassian’s; Bodhi’s been using it as an extra layer since practically the minute they set foot on Hoth.

It still smells a little bit like their Captain.

Bodhi doesn’t let himself think about that. Not now.)

“Lieutenant Rook,” the officer says gently and Bodhi shakes himself from his thoughts.

He waves a hand in mute apology for his distraction and a gesture to continue. The other lieutenant, a stocky dark-skinned man that Bodhi vaguely remembers from one of Jyn’s combat classes, leads him quickly to one of _Home One_ ’s meeting rooms.

(He remembers those classes, begun in the days after Scarif when both Bodhi and Cassian were too injured to move much and Jyn’s restlessness was turning to aggression. He remembers watching the fierce joy in her face as she sparred with a Pathfinder or taught a new recruit to throw a good punch. He remembers the way her smile made her look years younger; it was like getting a glimpse of the little girl Galen had always talked about but that time and tragedy had worn away. Bodhi wants to see that smile all the time.)

They are quickly joined in the meeting room by both General Rieekan, Hoth’s former base commander, and Major Derlin, the Intelligence division security chief for the base. With Bodhi’s ship having been the last to leave the planet and the last to make it through the Imperial blockade, he guesses that the intelligence he can provide would be valuable for the fleet, though he doesn’t know how much he can add to what they already know. He was more concerned with getting his ship past the star destroyers than he was with making note of details.

Any other day, being in the same room with this many high-ranking personnel would give Bodhi the shakes. (The last time had been the Council session before their mission to Scarif. Most missions now, Jyn and Cassian do all the talking and that suits Bodhi just fine.)

With a concentrated effort, Bodhi tries to drag his thoughts back to the debrief in front of him, but it does little good. The combination of fatigue, adrenaline, and stim withdrawal is making his thoughts skip uncomfortably and a subtle white noise press against his ears. The debriefing passes in a wavering haze and for the life of him Bodhi can’t remember what he says.

The only clear moment is the loaded glance the officers exchange when Bodhi tells them about Jyn and Cassian, and Bodhi is much too tired to even try to interpret what they might be thinking.

The minute he’s released from the debriefing, he follows a private down to the Med Bay and collapses into sleep.

 

Six hours later he is awake and shaking, cold sweat drying on his skin and a scream caught in his throat. The images from the dream remain seared in his brain and no matter how hard he presses his palms against his eyes, he can’t force them out.

_Jyn and Cassian, lying tangled together in the snow. Bodhi approaches, knowing that they’re waiting for him, waiting for it to be the three of them together, a_ finally _instead of the almost of the last three years. He reaches for them, but at his touch they turn to snowflakes and the wind carries them away._

_They are gone forever and Bodhi is alone._

He’s had this dream before. Usually, though, there is no snow and no Hoth and Bodhi only has to peek his head over the side of his bunk to find them sleeping in their own bunks. Usually Cassian and Jyn turn to stardust and Bodhi wakes with only a sense of regret for missing his chance.

He always convinces himself, in the dream’s aftermath, that this will be the day he tells them how he feels. That he’ll take their casual physical affection — the affection they allow only the three of them — a step further and plant a kiss on either of them. That he’ll take one of their quiet sessions of sharing secrets in the darkness and tell them that he loves them both. That instead of ignoring those moments of crackling electricity where the three of them trade glances and the air feels like a storm about to break with the things they haven’t talked about, he’ll _say something_.

He never does.

And now he might never be able to.

The dream is worse, he thinks, when there’s a very real chance that it will come true.

He draws his knees up to his chest and folds his arms around them, clutching his ankles to keep his hands from shaking.

“I won’t let it.”

He doesn’t realize he’s spoken the words until the sound of them breaks the dim stillness in his private corner of the Med Bay. His fingers clench and settle. The words feel right on his tongue.

“I won’t let it happen,” he says. “I’m going to get them back.”

The shakes ease out of his limbs and his breathing comes easier. For the first time since the alarms started blaring across the base, he feels calm.

“I’m going to get them back,” he says. “And then I’m going to tell them.”

Whatever it takes, he will not lose Jyn and Cassian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve seen several authors use the idea of Bodhi with a prosthesis in the wake of Scarif, and it’s rapidly becoming my headcanon for any AU where Bodhi lives. I first saw the idea in the art of the incredible shima_spoon (http://shima-spoon.tumblr.com/) and wanted to acknowledge her work because it’s amazing and its my inspiration for Bodhi’s prosthetic arm. If you haven't seen her work already, go check it out!


	4. Chapter 4

It’s easy enough, Jyn thinks, to make bold claims about being able to survive until Bodhi comes back for them. The reality is much more complicated.

Her stomach grumbles an uncomfortable reminder as she lies in the snow, quadnocs firmly focused on the remains of the Rebel base several klicks away. Two weeks after the attack, there are still Imperial forces crawling over the base and she and Cassian are running out of supplies. They’ve been rationing since the first day, but there was only so much Jyn could get her hands on in the short time she had during the evacuation.

If Bodhi doesn’t come soon — and Jyn knows Command won’t even consider authorizing a rescue until the Imperials have left — she and Cassian are going to have to risk a raid on the base.

(Which means _she_ is going to have a make a raid on the base because Cassian is still recovering from the injuries he took during the attack and isn’t ready for combat, even though he’ll insist that he is. On another mission, Jyn might let him get away with it, scared of letting him see too much — see _her_ too clearly — by insisting he sit out.

She can’t do that now.

She can’t bear the risk of losing him.)

So she ignores the hunger in her belly and cold creeping through her layers of clothing to focus on memorizing the Imperial search patterns. If she can figure out which parts of the base the Imperials have already searched, she can plan the best way to avoid their patrols for a raid.

Hours later, the cold and the hunger have made her short-tempered, but at least she has some intel to bring back to Cassian. From what she can see, she thinks the Imperials are concentrating their search efforts in the base’s Command areas and main hanger. That leaves some of the more distant wings mostly clear of troops.

Of course, those are also the parts of the base that were mostly destroyed during the assault, so even if there are supplies left in them, they’ll be very difficult to get to.

Sighing in frustration, she takes one more pass over the base and its surrounding snow fields. She’s about the pack up and head back to the cave when she notices something different — an opportunity.

There are no stormtroopers patrolling the tiny supply depot a klick away from the main base, the one the Rebels were using to provision the field infantry, the snow patrol, and the last of the pilots during the evacuation.

She knows they weren’t keeping much there, but there’s a chance that some supplies are left.

She debates with herself for only a minute. On the one hand, the supply depot may present an easy opportunity to get supplies, one that could avoid her having to risk her life _or Cassian’s_ on a more dangerous raid on the base itself. On the other hand, she’s done only minimal surveillance and could be about to get herself killed or captured.

Cassian, she knows, would urge caution and continued observation. He’d insist that she wait until she knew for sure whether the lack of stormtroopers was a momentary lapse in the patrols or a consistent gap. He’d insist on dragging himself out here to be her back-up.

It’s the last that convinces her. She can’t bear the risk of Cassian, still injured, being anywhere near the Imperials. She’ll have to gamble on the stormtroopers’ absence for long enough to raid the depot.

She’s gambled on longer odds before.

 

It takes her an hour of creeping through the snowfields to reach the depot. Though she doesn’t run across any patrols, she’s grateful for the white camo gear she brought during the evacuation. The closer she gets to base, the greater the risk that someone will spot the lone speck of movement on an otherwise empty snow field.

By the time she reaches the depot, the sun is beginning to creep towards the horizon, the wind is rising, and the biting cold has wormed its way through _all_ of her layers.

The depot itself is little more than a comms and tracking tower — long since blasted into scrap by fleeing Rebels, Imperials, or both — and a collection of caches half-buried in the snow. The snow trenches, leftover from the Rebellion’s desperate attempts to delay the Imperials from reaching the base, provide a little cover from the wind, but they’re also full of the frozen bodies of Rebel soldiers who died in the field.

Jyn determinedly avoids looking at the bodies as she crouches in the snow and carefully eases the first cache from the snowbank. The sturdy durasteel container has been heavily dented and when she opens the box, the contents are gone. She bites back a curse and carefully buries the box back in the snow.

The next three boxes reveal a similar story: dented, blasted, cracked and empty.

She sits back on her heels and lets out a rough breath. She doesn’t know whether the empty caches are a sign that the Rebels took everything with them when they fled or that the Imperials found and cleaned them out in the weeks since.

She’s debating whether to keep looking or head back to Cassian — who must be getting worried by this point — when she hears the crunch of snow under heavy boots and the crackle of a comm.

She doesn’t hesitate. She throws herself a few feet away down the trench ( _don’t let them know there are caches_ ) and sprawls facedown in the snow. As the footsteps draw slowly closer she frantically pulls lose snow over her body, hoping to camouflage herself as a snowdrift. Or, failing that, that she’ll at least look like one of the other Rebel bodies that’s been laying here for weeks.

She desperately prays to the Force that the troopers’ helmets don’t have infrared scanners.

(In the back of her mind, she spares a brief thought for Cassian, stuck in their emergency shelter, who’ll never know what happened to her if she dies here. Of Bodhi, hopefully halfway across the galaxy, who’ll never forgive himself if she does, even though there’s nothing he could have done. Of all the things unsaid between the three of them that she’ll never get a chance to say.

Her stomach clenches. _Please,_ she thinks to the universe, _not today_.)

As the first hint of white plastoid armor comes around the corner, she goes still. A thin film of snow over her head hides her from immediate view but lets her watch the approaching stormtroopers through her eyelashes. It’s a small patrol of three, heavy winter coverings muffling the normal noise of their armor.

Jyn catalogues their body language as the make their slow progress down the trench. Alert, but not tense. Weapons in hand, but held loosely. Helmets straight ahead, not scanning. Not searching.

Part of her relaxes. They aren’t actively looking for anything.

She feels the weight of her baton strapped to her leg and knows she could take them all down if she had to.

She doesn’t move.

Her heart pounds in her chest. She can’t feel the cold anymore. Her mind is still. Her every sense is tuned towards the stormtroopers.

If they find her, she can’t let them take her.

They continue down the trench. They don’t hesitate over the buried cache. They don’t hesitate over Jyn’s frozen form.

She can’t see them make the next turn in the trench, but can hear their bootsteps fade. For long minutes after they leave, she doesn’t move from her sprawl in the snow. Her limbs have begun to tremble slightly and the rush of adrenaline is making her heart race.

The returning feeling of the cold seeping through her clothes finally gets her to move. She shifts carefully out from under the snow, piling it back up behind her in case the patrol returns. Now would be the time, the cautious part of her thinks, to head back to the cave.

One close call might be all the luck she has.

But…

Even with the close call and the increasing risk of Imperial soldiers, the situation hasn’t changed. She and Cassian still need more supplies and this depot is the least risky place to get them. There are only two more caches to try.

If there’s nothing there, Jyn will have to abandon the effort and resign herself to a riskier run on the base itself.

She moves slower through the trenches now, pausing and checking for the sound of Imperial boots every few steps. Still, she makes it to both caches without encountering another patrol. The first is just like all the others: blasted and empty.

But the last, the one farthest from the depot and closest to the base, is the treasure trove she was looking for. Hidden at the end of a trench that doesn’t look like it saw any fighting and more well-hidden in the snow than the others, this cache hasn’t been touched. When she opens it, she finds it full of ration packs and emergency supplies.

She slumps with relief against the side of the trench and has to let out a few shaky breaths and just stare at the contents. Her kyber necklace warms for a moment against her skin and she thinks she feels the light of a wide smile and a whisper of _little sister._ It might be Chirrut and Baze, watching over her from the Force, or it might be the cold finally affecting her brain, but she’ll take it all the same.

She allows herself only a few moments to bask, whispers a prayer to the Force and a thank you to her Guardians, then drags her pack off her shoulders and begin to fill it.

In the end, she leaves behind a few of the bulkier items like the emergency shelter, but she manages to fit everything into her pack. With careful hands she reburies the cache, taking care to leave no trace that it’s been disturbed. The items themselves looked free from trackers and her portable scanner confirmed it.

Once the durasteel box is again hidden in the snow, Jyn swings the pack back onto her shoulders, relishing the feel of its weight. She pushes to her feet, takes one last thankful glance at the now-empty cache, and starts the long journey back to her and Cassian’s cave.

 

She hopes Cassian will be happy with her haul.

 

(He’s not. He shouts at her for ten minutes for risking her life and potentially alerting the Imperials to their presence. Jyn shouts back that it won’t do much good for them to avoid Imperial detection if they die of starvation before Bodhi can come back. They end up lying back to back in furious silence in the tent, too angry to curl up together as they’ve been doing for the past two weeks but too practical not to share body heat.

Cassian is the one to apologize first. Voice quiet in the cold stillness, he tells her that he can’t bear to lose her. She means too much to him. She means too much to him and Bodhi both.

Jyn’s apology is unspoken, communicated instead through the gentleness in her touch as she tugs Cassian to face her and slots their bodies together. _Me too_ , her body says as she wraps her arms around him.

It’s the first time any of them has spoken aloud about the unspoken thing between them.)


	5. Chapter 5

The blizzard comes up unexpectedly when they’re only an hour from the cave system. They’re on their way back from scouting the ongoing Imperial presence in the abandoned Rebel base, and Cassian is beginning to regret insisting that he come. His still-bruised ribs started aching miles ago and his back has begun to remind him that it never fully healed after Scarif.

But after Jyn’s reckless raid on the emergency stockpile, he hadn’t been willing to let her go out again without him.

It had led to several days of shouting and angry silences until they’d finally compromised on a short scouting mission.

 

(In the back of him mind, Cassian admits that his insistence has nothing to do with trying to stop Jyn from doing anything reckless. He couldn’t stop her even if he tried and he knows that no matter how reckless her actions look, she never does anything without thinking it through.

His insistence has everything to do with being unable to contemplate the idea of her dying alone.

He’s determined to be there for her, even if his presence won’t do her much good.)

 

((Even further back in his mind, in a place he’s only just beginning to admit to, he thinks that this wouldn’t be a problem if Bodhi was here. Because if Bodhi was here, then there wouldn’t be a chance of either of them dying alone.

And if Bodhi was here they wouldn’t be fighting about it, because he would have slid in and made them _talk_ to each other without shouting.

Bodhi’s absence is an ache just as strong as the idea of losing Jyn.))

 

Cassian is the one to notice the warning signs of the rising wind and lowering visibility. For all that every Rebel stationed on Hoth had learned to read the planet’s capricious weather for the sake of survival, Cassian’s instincts had been tempered years earlier. He may not have been on Fest since he was a child, but there were some things you never forgot, and how to recognize a gathering blizzard was one of them.

He tugs on the sleeve of Jyn’s parka and, when she looks over, gestures to the landscape around them.

“Blizzard,” he says. “We need to get back.”

She doesn’t even hesitate before nodding and they pick up the pace. A warmth seizes Cassian’s insides at the show of trust; he knows it’s hard to earn from her and even three years later he still treasures the fact that she decided to trust him.

(He doesn’t let himself think about the other reason her trust and her attention makes him feel warm inside. There’s no time for that. Especially in the middle of a blizzard.)

The wind rises quickly around them, howling past their ears and blowing snow into their eyes. Without asking, they reach out and clasp hands. It’s difficult to do in their heavy mittens, but they can’t risk losing each other in the snow.

Cassian activates the navigation beacon strapped around his wrist and they trudge on as snow piles up around their feet and the landscape disappears into an indistinguishable see of white. He can’t see anything in front of him; he can barely see Jyn only a foot away from him. Only her hand in his assures him that she’s still there. The pulsing of the beacon on his wrist is the only guide they have.

He’s not sure whether she falls first or he does, but there’s a confusing moment of unseen ledges and flailing limbs and white and wind and Cassian finds himself sprawled in the snow. Alone.

Jyn’s hand is no longer in his. He can’t see her through the snow.

He doesn’t spare any breath for the litany of denials racing through his mind. _No no no no, not Jyn._ He scrambles to his feet and shouts.

“Jyn!”

The wind tears his words away so quickly he can’t even hear himself.

“Jyn!”

For a moment he stands frozen, mind blank and heart pounding. Jyn is gone and he doesn’t know how to find her. He makes himself breath, drawing in a lungful of bitingly cold air and forcing his mind to settle. He knows that standing in one place in this kind of weather is a bad idea, but he also knows that if he moves in the wrong direction, Jyn will be gone forever.

She’d insisted that he take their only nav beacon.

He should have fought harder against that, but it had been the compromise she demanded in return for an end to their argument about Cassian going scouting with her.

He shakes off those thoughts. They’re not helping him now.

He can barely feel his feet and shivers wrack his body. He thinks. The memories are jumbled but he remembers feeling the ground shift under his feet. Remembers them both going tumbling down the unexpected slope. Remembers Jyn’s hand sliding from his as he went rolling past her.

Back up then, he thinks.

He can’t see the hill, the snow is too blinding, but he can feel the slight changes in slope under his feet. He aims himself as directly as possible back up and begins to trudge carefully through the snow. Every few steps he stops and calls her name.

It feels like hours later when he pauses. There’s something… different. A snatch of noise that isn’t howling wind. He wants to think it’s Jyn, looking for him just as he’s looking for her. He thinks it might be a hallucination.

It’s not on the route he’s been treading back up the slope. If he follows it, he could be walking away from Jyn. He could end up getting them both killed by wandering off into a blizzard.

He turns and goes. He might be hallucinating, he might be imagining things, he might be dooming them both, but if there’s a chance that it’s her, he has to take it.

He follows the snatches of sound, calling her name and never feeling like he’s getting any closer. His body aches and his mind feels slow. He wants to lay down and curl up and sleep, but he can’t. _Jyn_ , he tells himself. _Find Jyn._

He nearly walks past the shape huddled in the snow.

He stops and stares, frozen brain unable to think. It’s her, curled into a ball and nearly buried by snow. He stumbles to her and reaches out to shake her shoulders.

_Please_ , he thinks, _don’t let me be too late_.

Thick mittens and parkas keep him from feeling any warmth from her body. He can’t tell if the slight movement he feels under his hands is her breathing or his imagination.

She looks up. Her face is white with cold, but her eyes are the same arresting green.

He crushes her in a hug, and his trembling is part cold and part relief. He wants to hear her voice but the wind is too loud.

They stumble to their feet, both unable to stand on their own and leaning on each other just to keep upright. He adjusts the nav beacon on his wrist and they start walking.

 

Somehow, they make it back into the cave system. They stumble through the twists and turns to where their shelter is hidden. Cassian’s mind is blank of anything but the feel of Jyn in his arms, the weight of her leaning into his strength and lending her own in return.

They collapse through the door of the tent. Jyn has the presence of mind to zip it closed as Cassian unlaces his boots with numb hands. They’ve both stopped shivering and in the back of his mind, he knows that’s a bad sign.

They need to get warm.

Jyn joins him as he shucks he snow-caked outer clothing, tossing her own onto the pile growing in a corner of the tent.

They’re down to their last, innermost layers when they curl up together in the same sleeping bag. Face to face, their breath mingles and Cassian can feel the press of her body against his. The shivers return and then ease as their bodies warm and Cassian can think again. He pulls Jyn close and tucks his face against the snow melting out of her hair.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he says, and now the trembling is the release of fear.

“I waited,” Jyn says, pressing her forehead briefly against his collarbone. She pulls back just far enough to meet his eyes. “I knew you would come for me.”

Cassian breathes through the punch of emotion and touches her face. Her cheek still feels cold under the rough skin of his palm. Her eyes burn into his and he can’t think of anything but getting as close to her as possible. Of giving her all of him. Of accepting all that she’ll give him in return.

They’ve been dancing around this for years, but now their reasons for hesitating — the war, their team, their own insecurities, the fear of disrupting the family they had clawed into existence — feel like nothing more than fear.

He almost lost her today. She almost lost him in the Imperial attack. Neither of them knows where Bodhi is.

He doesn’t want to wait anymore.

He can’t.

He doesn’t know which of them moves first, but there’s a moment when he cocks his head in question and she dips hers in response, and they move together.

Cassian always thought that kissing Jyn would be like kissing fire—wild and uncontrollable and heat that could warm you and burn you at the same time. He hadn’t considered the gentle care that lives in her heart, protected by an armor of violence and calculated distance. Her kiss is the gentle warmth of a fire banked for the evening, glowing embers and radiating heat.

He's lost in the feel of it, the gentle press of her lips against his and the spark burning between them.

They kiss once, twice, and pause, pressing their foreheads together and breathing each other’s air. They won’t go any further tonight, he knows.

“Bodhi,” he says, and feels her nod.

“Not without him,” she says.

He tightens his arms around her shoulders as she wraps her own around his waist and tangles their legs together. Warmth glows inside him and he feels a smile tug the corners of his mouth.

Nothing will be the same now, but he feels no fear at having taken this plunge. It feels _right_ , like something has finally slotted into place after too long out of alignment.

When they make it back to Bodhi, they’ll have their last missing piece back and they can finally have the conversation they’ve been dancing around for too many years.

Cassian’s smiling as he tucks his face into Jyn’s hair, and as he slides into sleep he lets himself dream, for the first time, of the three of them, together, as he never dared to think he might get to have.


	6. Chapter 6

Bodhi expects to have to fight harder convince anyone in command to let him go back to Hoth for Jyn and Cassian, especially in light of what he’s heard about the events on Cloud City and the resulting obsession on the part of both Princess Organa and Commander Skywalker to track down the missing Captain Solo.

But when Bodhi tentatively approaches General Draven about it — because as much as the man terrifies Bodhi and has never seemed to approve of the Rogue One team in the _three years_ since the events on Scarif, he is still Cassian’s superior officer and does at least seem to value their captain — the general just gives him a long, thoughtful look.

“You really think they’re still alive, don’t you,” he says.

Bodhi bites back an offended frown. _Of course_ he thinks they’re still alive. He’d _told_ command that they were alive in his initial debrief. The only reason he hasn’t been pushing every day in the month since the evacuation to go back and get them is that the monitoring devices left of Hoth had continued to report an Imperial presence on the frozen planet.

Until yesterday.

“Yes,” Bodhi says. “I’m sure. Jyn could have gotten them both to the caves. If they had enough provisions, they could still be alive.”

“And if they were captured by the Imperials?” General Draven’s face doesn’t give a single clue about his thoughts.

Bodhi tries not to be discouraged. He reminds himself that Jyn and Cassian are counting on him.

“If they were captured, surely we would have heard something,” he says.

Draven acknowledges this with a short nod. If the Imperials had managed to capture a top Rebel Intelligence agent and the troublesome daughter of Galen Erso, there would, at the very least, be rumors about it.

Instead, there’s been nothing and the Imperial presence finally seems to have pulled back from Hoth.

Draven regards Bodhi for a long, tense minute.

Bodhi tries not to fidget. He tries to look appropriately determined but not desperate. (He is desperate. He’ll steal another ship if he has to. He did it for Scarif and he’ll do it again. He just doesn’t particularly want to remind Draven of that.)

“Alright,” Draven says. “You have a go. Take a team of Pathfinders. See if you can recover anything else from the base.”

Bodhi blinks in surprise. “I… I can go?”

Draven nods and a hint of a smile curls at the corners of his mouth. “Bring our people home.”

Bodhi nods and scrambles out of the command room. As he goes to find Kes Dameron, a shiver works its way down his spine. That smile is probably one of the most terrifying things he’s ever seen, and he’s faced the Death Star twice.

He didn’t even know General Draven _could_ smile.

 

The frozen white landscape of Hoth looms large in Bodhi’s windshield as he navigates the U-Wing gingerly down through the atmosphere. Even from this height it’s possible to tell that a battle was fought here. The remains of downed snowspeeders and destroyed AT-ATs are still dark grey scars on the landscape, though the snow has begun to reclaim them.

In another few months, Bodhi thinks, maybe the evidence would be gone altogether.

He hopes the Rebel Alliance won’t be so easily erased.

As he clears a layer of turbulence and brings the ship in lower, Kes Dameron, seated in the co-pilot’s chaired, whistles a sound of awe.

“That’s some damage,” he says.

Bodhi can see what he means. The former rebel base coming into view is a battered shell of what it was the last time Bodhi saw it. Two thirds of the structure has collapsed or been blasted away by the Imperial attack and the rest, exposed to Hoth’s relentless wind and snow, has begun to return to the frozen block of ice it was before the Rebel Alliance arrived.

Bodhi makes several low passes over the base, letting Kes and another of his Pathfinders, a brown-furred Selonian named Marsi, make thorough sweeps with their sensors.

“I’m not detecting any Imperial presence nor any transmissions,” Marsi says. “That doesn’t mean those bastards aren’t here though.” A frown scrunches the fur on the Selonian’s muzzle as she glares at her instrument panel.

“We’ll take it slow and careful,” Kes says. “Set us down Bodhi.”

Bodhi does, maneuvering the U-Wing into a relatively clear and flat space in the remains of the main hanger. The roof has been blasted away, but the hanger itself is clear of rubble and the walls seem solid. Their added protection will help keep the U-Wing from freezing in the cold wind and give the Pathfinders easier access to the parts of the base that seem the most intact.

They’d made their decision to start their search at the base in the initial planning stages for the mission. Bodhi had wanted to fly straight for the cave system where Jyn had said she was going to hide, but Kes had pointed out the danger of potentially revealing the cave system to any Imperial watchers they hadn’t been able to see. If Jyn and Cassian were watching the base — and they would be, Bodhi knew — they would be able to make their way to the ship or signal the need for pick-up. If the Imperials were watching, it would be better that they thought the Rebels had returned to salvage their base than that they had returned for other Rebels hidden on the planet.

Besides, Marsi had pointed out, the cave system was large and completely unexplored, and Bodhi had no idea where in the system Jyn would be hiding.

Reluctantly, Bodhi had agreed with their arguments.

(That did not mean, though, that he was willing to leave the planet without Jyn and Cassian. If they didn’t come to the base, Bodhi planned to fly the ship to the cave system regardless of what Kes said and spend however many days were necessary to search the entire thing.

He hopes it won’t come to that.)

As the U-Wing’s engines begin to power down, the Pathfinder squad pulls on their winter gear.

“I was really hoping never to have to wear this druk again,” one of the Pathfinders complains.

The man’s name is lost to Bodhi in the stress of worrying about Jyn and Cassian, but Bodhi knows that he’s relatively new to the Rebellion and that he comes from a warm planet. (Mostly because he’s been complaining about the cold on Hoth since they left the fleet.) He feels sympathy for the man. Bodhi grew up in Jedha’s cold desert, but even he found Hoth unbearable.

“You’re dreaming if you think we’ll never have to fight the Imps on another cold planet,” Marsi says, zipping her own parka. Though the Selonian was as well-furred as the rest of her species, even she needed the extra protection on Hoth.

Bodhi reaches into the locker to pull out his own winter gear, but Kes’s hand on his arm stops him.

“Not you, Rook,” Kes says.

Bodhi frowns at the sergeant.

“Someone has to stay with the ship,” Kes says, not unkindly. “And you’re the best pilot we have.”

Bodhi _does not_ want to stay with the ship, but if there’s one thing the Rebel Alliance and the Empire agree on, it’s that the pilot stays with the ship. It’s not the first time since Scarif that Bodhi has been forced to stay behind while his friends are in danger. That doesn’t mean he likes it any more than he ever did.

“Hey,” Kes says, lowering his voice and turning his back slightly on the rest of the crew. “It’s not because I don’t think you can handle it. It’s because Erso and Andor will kill me if anything happens to you.”

Bodhi contemplates the other man for a long moment, then nods. He doesn’t like it, but he’ll accept it.

(And he knows it’s true. While he’s far from a non-combatant — the Rebellion’s need for it’s personnel to be able to do any job and three years of tutelage and support from Jyn and Cassian have taught Bodhi to fight when and if it’s needed — Bodhi will still always be most comfortable behind the controls of a ship or digging into its mechanics. It’s always worked for their team, but right now Bodhi wishes he was more of a frontline soldier.)

“I’ll work the comm system,” he says. “See if I can contact Jyn and Cassian.”

It wasn’t part of the plan, but Kes accepts the compromise with grace. Likely, Bodhi thinks, he knows that there’s nothing he can do to stop Bodhi once the rest of them leave.

“Janson, you’re staying with Rook,” Kes calls.

One of the Pathfinders lets out a quiet cheer and abandons the process of pulling on her second layer of gloves.

The rest finish suiting up and cautiously creep out into the abandoned base. Bodhi allows himself only a moment to suck in a few lungfuls of freezing air before closing the ship’s door and returning to the cockpit. Janson joins him a moment later, having stripped off the outermost layers of her winter gear. Like Bodhi, she’s still wearing a parka, thin gloves, and thick boots. Though the U-Wing’s idling engine will provide some measure of warmth, Hoth’s cold is relentless and they can’t afford the fuel expenditure it would take to make the ship truly comfortable.

Without prompting, Janson takes the co-pilot’s seat and turns her attention to the monitors that will alert them to any Imperial ships entering the atmosphere. She also drags on a pair of thick ear phones and flips on the frequency to monitor the Pathfinders’ comm signals.

At Bodhi’s curious look, she flicks him a smile.

“I figured I’d do most of the monitoring so you could focus on finding Erso and Andor, and get us off this rock faster,” she says.

Bodhi smiles back in gratitude. Officially, finding Jyn and Cassian is only one part of the mission, but it’s nice to hear that the other Pathfinders have prioritized it the same way Bodhi has. He knows he should care about any equipment or intel they can salvage from the base, but ultimately Jyn and Cassian matter much more to him.

“Thanks,” he says and turns his attention to the U-Wing’s long-range comm systems.

He scrolls slowly through every frequency both the Rebels and the Imperials might have used, listening for any noise from the other end. He doesn’t broadcast yet. The last thing he wants is to give away either the Pathfinders’ presence or Jyn and Cassian’s hiding place.

As he works, he keeps a corner of his attention on the Pathfinder team working through the base. Their communications are short and infrequent, just clicks and single words at set intervals to confirm their status and progress. Like Bodhi, they aren’t willing to risk giving away their presence to listening Imperials.

He hopes they find something of value.

Three full circuits through the comm frequencies reveal no signals or communications that Bodhi can pick up, either Imperial or from Jyn and Cassian. He glances over at Janson and waits until he can catch her attention.

“Ready to broadcast,” he says quietly. It doesn’t matter how much noise they make in the U-Wing, but something about the abandoned base and the tension of the mission makes Bodhi want to whisper.

Janson nods and clicks thrice on the Pathfinder frequency to warn Kes and the others. She gives Bodhi a thumbs up.

He takes a deep breath, murmurs a short Jedhan prayer, and opens a channel on the frequency he and Jyn and Cassian have been using since the attack on Scarif. Like the rest of the team, he doesn’t risk a voice transmission; instead he plays a brief recording of static and droid binary. It’s a technique Cassian and Kaytoo had developed and Cassian had taught Bodhi and Jyn. Though none of them could communicate as much as Kaytoo had been able to, they’d developed, through extensive practice, enough of a system to communicate the most important information they might need on a mission.

Like _rescue has arrived_.

He plays the recording twice more, then shuts down the transmission and looks to Janson. She’s got all her attention keenly focused on their monitors, watching for any indication that the Imperials have detected their presence.

After a few long, tense moments, she shakes her head at Bodhi.

“Nothing yet,” she says.

Bodhi nods but doesn’t let himself relax. They have no way of knowing whether an Imperial ship is waiting beyond their sensor range for an indication that the Rebels have returned to Hoth.

Bodhi twists his fingers nervously in his lap and waits, praying that Jyn and Cassian are still out there, that they’ll get his message, that they’ll get safely to the ship.

He _needs_ them to come home.

 

Forty-five minutes later, their sensors start wailing an alarm and Janson swears vociferously in Huttese.

The Imperials are back.


	7. Chapter 7

The icy cold of Hoth’s air aches in her lungs as Jyn skids around the final corner in the back of their cave system. The heavy weight of the blaster on her thigh and the chill working its way through her clothing raises a gnawing sense of familiarity.

“Cassian!” she shouts.

He emerges swiftly from their shelter.

“Imperials back on base,” she says, and sees him frown. She knows how he feels; they’d started to hope, once the Imperials left, that they wouldn’t be back.

But that’s not the urgent part of her news.

“There’s a Rebel ship too,” she says.

Cassian goes still and inscrutable for a minute, the long-ingrained habit of a spy who can never let his emotions show, but then a small smile starts at the edges of his mouth.

“You’re sure it’s Rebel?” he says, but he’s already moving to deconstruct the emergency shelter.

Jyn moves quickly at his side, packing away the last of their equipment and supplies. It takes very little time. Most of it has been packed for days, ever since the Imperials left, in anticipation of having to make a quick departure. They can’t leave anything behind for the Imperials to find; in the unlikely event that the Rebels have to use this cave system again, they don’t want the Imperials knowing about it.

“I’m sure,” she says. She pulls out her comm unit and plays back the signal she’d recorded from the Rebel ship.

Cassian stills as the mix of static and droid binary plays, quiet but distinct, through the unit’s speakers. He looks at her and the joy in his face is like a rising sun.

“Bodhi,” he says, almost reverently.

Jyn can feel her own face widening into the same broad smile. “Bodhi,” she says.

They allow themselves only a moment of shared joy at the thought of seeing their pilot again.

“The Imperials?” Cassian asks, swinging his pack onto his pack with a grimace.

Jyn watches him with a small frown; Hoth’s cold has done his healing ribs no favors and the walk back to base will be a difficult one. She wishes she hadn’t had to let the tauntauns go; they would never have been able to keep the beasts fed, but it would make getting back to base now much easier.

“There’s a star destroyer in orbit, and it looks like they’re landing troops again,” she says.

She doesn’t mention Cassian’s injuries. They both know it wouldn’t make any difference; they have no choice but to go and hope for the best.

Cassian nods and secures his pack, but just lightly enough that he can abandon it in a hurry if they have to run. Jyn swings on her own pack and the pair set out together.

The route back to the abandoned Rebel base is a familiar one; they’ve been walking it daily to scout the ongoing Imperial presence. Today, urgency adds speed to their travel; they bypass all the winding twists and detours they become accustomed to taking in order to avoid the possibilities of Imperial pursuit.

The direct route still takes almost an hour, even at their quick pace, and as they hurry over the last ridge, the view that meets them isn’t a comforting one. The battered Rebel transport crouched in the remains of the main hanger is a welcome vision; the Imperial transport settled on the snowfield outside and the flashes of blaster fire from inside the base are not.

Jyn feels her heart climb into her throat, and when she glances over at Cassian, she finds him already watching her with the same expression on his face.

They don’t need to exchange words; they know they have to go now and quickly.

And they do.

Jyn wants to fly down the slope and run straight for the Rebel ship, through the Imperials forces if she has to. She knows better though and even if she was willing to abandon sense, Cassian is more cautious than her.

They creep together through the snowfield, keeping a careful eye out for Imperial scouts, and make it without being spotted to the shadow of the base’s walls.

Cassian turns right, heading towards one of the lesser-used entrances that should let them get in without the Imperials noticing, but Jyn hesitates, her mind working quickly. Her gaze is fixed to the left where, just around the curve of the base, she can see the edges of the Imperial transport.

Cassian notices her hesitation as is back at her side in moments.

“Jyn?” he asks. She can hear the strain in his voice, but no impatience. He’s used to the way she evaluates and adjusts her plans mid-mission.

In that, they work surprisingly well together. Cassian works everything out to the smallest detail in advance, then trusts Jyn’s in-the-moment tactical mind to adjust the plan as needed on the fly.

“The Imperial ship,” she says, turning to meet his gaze. “We have to destroy it so it can’t follow us out.”

Cassian nods, brow furrowed.

“Sabotage,” he suggests. “Something they won’t notice until they try to lift off.”

“Or until it’s triggered,” Jyn says, a small smile pulling at her lips as ideas fill her head.

Cassian falls into her wake and together they creep along the edges of the base until the Imperial transport comes into full view. The transport is sitting in the open, across two hundred feet of open snow. To get to it, they’ll have to cross that field, and they’ll be highly visible for every minute.

But that’s Cassian’s problem and Jyn lets him get to it.

While he takes the quadnocs and begins identifying the scouts left behind to guard the transport and figuring out the best route to the ship, Jyn crouches and pulls open her pack. None of it’s contents are really _meant_ to explode and those that occasionally do aren’t designed to do it on purpose.

But Jyn has done more with less, and if her years with Partisan taught her anything, it’s that anything can be made to explode if combined correctly with a little patience.

She gets to work quickly, wiring together the battery pack from a spare blaster to the control unit from her comm and sealing it all in a bag filled with the chemical soup from the heaters in their ration packs. In only a few minutes, the crude device sits on the snow before her and leans back on her heels, satisfied.

She glances up and finds Cassian glancing between her and the device with open astonishment. She blinks back at him, but realizes that it’s the first time she’s ever had to assemble a bomb from scraps in his presence. It’s not the first time she’s made something explode for the Rebellion before, but up until now she’s always done it with manufactured devices she pulled from the armoury.

She shrugs and says, “Partisans,” to answer the question on Cassian’s face.

His expression clears and he nods.

She knows that the furrow in his brow and the tightening at the corners of his mouth means that he still has questions, but that he won’t ask them until she brings it up first. He’s just as reticent as her to talk about his past.

“There’s a gap in the patrol,” he says, neatly shifting the subject, “and if we swing wide to the left, we should be able to get to the transport without being seen.”

He hesitates, then tips his head down towards the bomb.

“Can that be moved quickly without going off?” he asks.

She grins. “It won’t go off until I tell it to,” she says.

He nods, lets her gather up the device — carefully, because she’s not stupid, even if the bombs she builds are anything but delicate or sensitive — and leads the way out towards the transport.

The dash across the snow is still nerve-wracking, no matter what Cassian says about gaps in the patrol, and as they reach the shadow of the transport, Jyn can feel her heart pounding in her throat.

She takes over the lead from Cassian and makes her way quickly to the back of the transport where it’s engines connect to the body of the ship. There isn’t a lot of room to work with, but she quickly sees and open space that will be perfect.

“Gimme a boost,” she whispers, and Cassian obligingly kneels to let her clamber onto his shoulders.

(Three years ago, she would never have trusted anyone enough to even _ask_ for a boost, let alone accept one. She hadn’t realized how lonely and isolated that past her was until she finally found people she could trust.)

Cassian lifts her easily towards the engines and she goes to work, fingers flying as she connects to the bomb to the engine housing. She mindful of the strain she must be putting on Cassian’s still-healing injuries, so she works quickly and it’s only moments before the device is connected.

She taps the top of Cassian’s head ad he kneels again to let her down.

They race back across the snow, edging around the base until the find an open, unguarded door.

The blaster fire echoing through the base is making her heart jump and her fingers twitch, but takes a moment to show Cassian how to activate the bomb with his comm unit.

( _Just in case_ , she thinks, but doesn’t say, and from the way Cassian’s fingers tighten on hers, he thinks it too.)

“Let’s go find our pilot,” he says.

She bares her teeth in a wild grin and nods, pulling out her blaster and checking the charge. They plunge into the abandoned Rebel base together.


	8. Chapter 8

The sound of blaster fire steadily increases as Cassian and Jyn wind their way through the base. Cassian’s heart beats a steady, fast rhythm in his chest. They make their way through familiar corridors made unfamiliar by collapsed ceilings, pockmarks, and scraps of abandoned equipment. Every scrape of sound makes Cassian’s fingers tighten around his blaster.

Cassian feels a clench of residual fear in his gut. Even though the attack was over a month ago, he can easily imagine these halls filled with Imperial stormtroopers and Jyn trying to drag his unconscious weight to safety.

He glances at her, sees the tight clench of her jaw, and decides not to say anything.

There will be time later, he tells himself, and ignores the real risk that they won’t make it out.

He can’t allow himself to think of that.

Without needing to discuss it, they follow the sounds of blaster fire to the base’s main hanger. The door to the hanger is askew and the smell of plasma and burnt machinery seeps into the corridor.

Cassian risks a quick glance through the door to check the situation. It’s not great. The Pathfinder team has been driven back to the edge of the hanger, sheltering behind pieces of abandoned equipment. A squad of stormtroopers cuts them off from the transport; the empty expanse of hanger offers no cover to hide behind. Another squad of stormtroopers advance on the transport itself, a pair of troopers manhandling a mobile weapons platform with enough power to punch through the U-Wing’s hull.

Cassian trades a glance with Jyn. The odds are terrible. They both know it.

They’ve got the element of surprise, but that won’t last for long, and two squads of stormtroopers are more than even they can handle.

The crunch of Imperial boots on snow from the corridor behind them makes their decision.

There’s no way to go but forward.

They trade one last look, check their blasters, and lunge into the room.

They move together like dancers, long accustomed to each other’s patterns. Cassian goes for the squad further from them, the one approaching the U-Wing. A blaster is not a sniper rifle, but his aim is true and they begin to fall. Jyn aims for the squad pinning down the Pathfinders, picking off four before they even realize what’s happening.

They get only a few moments of surprise. Then the troopers turn and Jyn and Cassian’s deadly dance becomes a lot more frenetic.

They press closer together for cover as blaster fire fills the air around them. Cassian’s world narrows to the brush of their arms, the smell of burnt plastoid, the ache of his body, and the warmth of the blaster in his hands.

They angle towards the ship, firing steadily as they move. The ship is the goal and, sitting in the corner of Cassian’s vision, he takes it at his beacon.

(Bodhi’s on board. Bodhi _has_ to be on board.)

He doesn’t hear the shot, but he feels Jyn stumble. He catches her with one arm but can’t turn to look.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she says and she’s still firing but she doesn’t let go of Cassian’s arm.

He presses closer, offering support and cover. Neither of them slows.

They meet the Pathfinders halfway across the hanger. There’s no time for greetings, even if Cassian does want to clasp Kes Dameron on the shoulder and offer a heartfelt thanks.

The remains of the first two squads are forming up with the third coming through the hanger door. They have the cannon set up and there’s a brief lull in the shooting as they swing it into position.

“Time to run,” Kes says.

Cassian’s body protests every step as they pound across the hanger. He doesn’t slow and he doesn’t take his hands off Jyn.

The U-Wing’s entry swings open and they tumble in. A bolt from the blaster cannon whines past them, missing the ship by only a few centimeters.

“Rook, get us out of here!” Kes shouts and the U-Wing surges into the air.

(Bodhi’s _here_. Cassian’s heart leaps and he feels Jyn’s fingers tighten around his own.)

Cassian wants to collapse back against the floor, let the tension seep out of his body, and just _be_. It feels like Scarif all over again, a desperate run to an unlooked-for miracle and the sudden release of knowing _they made it_.

But they’re not done yet.

“The ship,” he murmurs to Jyn, and she flaps her hand in agreement.

He drags his pack to his side.

“Our ship’s fine,” Kes says, braced against an overhanging bin and watching them both with kind eyes.

“Not ours,” Cassian says. He pulls out his comm and flips it to the frequency Jyn had given him, then presses the transmit button.

For a moment, nothing happens, then one of the Pathfinders pressed against the ship’s viewports lets out a low whistle.

“That’s quite the bang,” he says.

Kes leans forward to look out the window and Cassian twists to do the same.

Echo Base is growing increasingly smaller in the viewport but the fiery glow of the burning Imperial ship is still clearly visible.

Kes blinks and then grins, looking over to Jyn.

“What did you use to get _that_?” he asks.

She grins back just as wide. “Blaster cell and a couple ration packs,” she says.

Kes looks taken aback for a second, then his grin stretches impossibly wider. “You’ll have to show me how to do that,” he says.

Jyn’s expression turns contemplative and teasing. “Don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she says. “Don’t think your wife would be too happy if you blew your fingers off.”

Kes laughs and shakes his head, turning to check on his team and letting Jyn and Cassian press together and breath.

“We made it,” Jyn says.

Cassian nods and wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“We _all_ made it,” he says.

She glances up at the U-Wing’s cockpit where the curve of Bodhi’s shoulder and his mess of dark hair secured in a tail are visible over the seat back.

“We did,” she says and tips her head back against his shoulder.

_Home_ , Cassian thinks and lets the sight of the two people most important to him in the galaxy lull him to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're finally back together! (Or, at least in the same very close vicinity?) Only one chapter left, where we'll finally get to the OT3.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this took way way way longer than I thought it was going to. A combination of academic overload and illness ate my life for the last few weeks, and the end of this chapter just wouldn't cooperate. I'm still not entirely sure I like it, but I've been wrestling with it for way too long.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

The last time Bodhi pulled into this hanger with a ship full of Rebels and the lingering cold of Hoth in his lungs, he’d been alone. This time, Cassian is sitting in the co-pilot’s seat — not because he’s doing any of the work, but because Jyn had forced him to _kriffing sit down and stop straining your broken ribs_ — and Jyn is braced against the back of both seats. Bodhi can see them both out of the corner of his eye and every time he catches them moving at the edges of his vision he feels a bubble of relief lifting up from his stomach.

Bodhi might’ve felt awkward about his need to keep them close if they hadn’t been just as determined to remain in his orbit.

The ship comes to a stop with a gentle thump and Bodhi lets his shoulders slump in relief. It’s finally starting to feel real that Jyn and Cassian are back with him, back with the Rebellion. It won’t feel like home until he can get them alone in their shared quarters and finally talk to them without anyone listening, but for the first time in weeks he feels like _home_ is in reach again.

Jyn squeezes a hand around his shoulder before helping Cassian lever himself up from his seat. Bodhi scrambles to help and, surprisingly, Cassian allows the assistance. He’s steady enough once he’s on his feet, but he doesn’t let go of Bodhi and Bodhi begins to think that maybe Jyn and Cassian missed him as much as he missed them.

They make their way back through the shuttle, already empty of Pathfinders, and Cassian only unwinds his arms after allowing Jyn and Bodhi to help him down to the hanger floor.

“Debrief,” he says, “then we can talk.”

Bodhi can already see him pulling his impervious, inscrutable spy armor back around him.

Jyn snorts. “No,” she says, “ _I’ll_ do the debrief. _You_ aren’t going anywhere until you’ve gone to Medical.”

Cassian furrows a brow. Jyn raises an eyebrow in return and Cassian folds. Bodhi can feel the tension running out of Cassian’s body from where their shoulders are pressed together.

Bodhi then finds himself under Jyn’s warm gaze.

“Look after him,” she says.

Bodhi smiles and nods.

“See you soon,” he says and tips his chin towards the sergeant waiting conspicuously a few feet away.

Jyn grimaces, sighs, and heads off.

Bodhi and Cassian both watch her go, then Bodhi presses his shoulder against Cassian’s.

“Medical,” he says.

Cassian sighs but turns with Bodhi and keeps pace with him across the hanger.

“On the way,” Bodhi suggests, “you can tell me why you need it.”

Cassian casts him a sidelong glance, but Bodhi doesn’t budge. A smile tugs at the corners of Cassian’s mouth and he starts to talk. Bodhi lets the sound of the other man’s voice wash over him and basks in the feeling of knowing that he’s home.

 

By the time Jyn is released from the debrief, Cassian has been cleared by Medical and Bodhi has gotten the other man settled in his quarters. Cassian is still recovering from the injuries he took on Hoth, a combination of cold, rationing, and lingering weakness from Scarif preventing his body from healing at anything more than a crawl. If it were anyone else, Medical would have kept them for observation at least. But both Medical and Bodhi have learned from long experience that Cassian is decidedly not a good patient and that, wherever possible, he should be allowed to recuperate in the privacy and calm of his own space.

Bodhi’s in the process of trying to cajole Cassian into laying down when Jyn steps through the door. Bodhi and Cassian both send pleading looks in her direction. Jyn grins at them.

“You don’t have to lay down,” she says to Cassian and Bodhi is about to object when she continues, “but you do have to _sit_ down and stay there.”

Cassian frowns but allows Bodhi to nudge him onto the narrow couch on one side of the tiny room. The space is not built for three. There’s only a single bunk, decently wide for one person but the only way they’d fit three would be literally sleeping on top of each other.

(Which Bodhi is resolutely _Not. Thinking. About_. If he does, he’ll never get through this conversation.)

Command hadn’t been willing to issue Rogue One their usual shared quarters when two thirds of the team was missing and presumed dead. The only concession they had been willing to make was to issue Bodhi the kind of officer-grade single room he would never have rated on his own.

(Which had almost been worse because it had been a constant reminder, in it’s pressing silence, of what —who — _should_ have been there.)

Bodhi shakes himself determinedly from his thoughts. Now is not the time to be sad. Jyn and Cassian are _here_ ; they’re alive and with Bodhi and _home_ and he still has the chance to tell them.

He perches on the edge of the bunk and watches his two favorite people finally shed some of the tension they’ve been carrying for weeks. Jyn flops down on the couch next to Cassian and lets out a breathy sigh of relief, slumping back as much as she can in the hard cushions.  Cassian too lets himself slump, and Bodhi can see him taking deep, deliberate breaths and letting the tension run out of his shoulders.

_Now_ , Bodhi thinks. _Tell them now._

It would be so easy to say nothing. To let the three of them slide, without comment, back into the comfortable way they orbited around each other.

So easy but something Bodhi isn’t willing to let himself do.

He’s not going to waste another chance.

Which _does not_ mean he knows how to start the conversation. He hasn’t practiced, not willing to let himself dwell. He has no idea what to say, but he laces his fingers together, grips hard, takes a deep breath, and lets his heart do the talking

It worked years for a lonely cargo pilot who risked striking up a friendship with an even more lonely Imperial scientist.

It will work now.

“I was thinking,” he says, slowly and deliberately, “while you were gone. About the things I’ve never said to you, that I might never get the _chance_ to say.”

He forces his eyes up from the decking. Cassian and Jyn are watching him intently; there’s nothing but warmth in their eyes.

“Things about us. Things about us that we don’t talk about but…” He falters, takes a breath, and pushes on. “But that we all know. I want to talk about it.”

Cassian and Jyn trading knowing looks and Bodhi thinks for a short, terrible moment that — isolated and abandoned on Hoth, alone but for each other — they’ve _already_ figured this out and it doesn’t include Bodhi.

Then they each reach out to grab one of his wrists and yank him off the bunk, over the gap, and onto the couch between them.

He’s not entirely sure how it happens, but he ends up wedged between them, his shoulders pressed against theirs.

“We had a long time to think too while we were… away,” Jyn says.

Bodhi curls his fingers around hers. They’re here now, even if it will take a lot of reminding before his brain finally believes it.

“You’re right,” Cassian says. “We don’t talk about this. And we should.”

Bodhi turns his head to meet Cassian’s gaze. The other man’s expression is warm but uncertain.

“What do you want, Bodhi?” he says.

For a moment Bodhi freezes. He started this conversation and he knows what he wants the result to be. He just doesn’t have the words yet.

Jyn snorts. “Don’t make him do all the work, captain,” she says, and squeezes Bodhi’s hand.

He squeezes back. “It’s okay,” he tells her. He meets Cassian’s gaze. “I want us,” he says. “All three of us.” He turns and finds Jyn watching him warmly. “I want all three of us. Together. In any way we can be.”

She grins back at him.

“That’s what we want too,” she says and Bodhi’s heart leaps.

He looks to Cassian and finds the captain smiling at them both.

“All together,” Cassian says.

 

As Bodhi suspected, the bed is definitely too small to fit three people in any configuration except laying on top of each other. But with their limbs tangled together and the comfort of each other’s warmth a steady reminder that they’re all _here_ , Bodhi decides he wouldn’t have it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done! *cheers* Hope you enjoyed the ride!

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang with me on Tumblr at thekearlyn.tumblr.com


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